Second Chance
by Severa22
Summary: With the end drawing near, Loki seizes the chance to set things right.
1. With My Trust

"You're dying, you second-rate excuse for a sorcerer."

Loki knelt low over the rubble of concrete and steel that covered Midgard's finest. Buried underneath the same fine trappings of the Sanctum that had kept them all safe, Stephen Strange knew, in the way that doctors often do, that there was no coming back from this.

"Excuse me for saving your life."

There was a massive slab of concrete broken into large chunks beside them, having crashed down harmlessly on no one instead of onto Loki's head. In making sure that their resident seidhr-sorcerer might not die (because, in all honestly, he was the only sorcerer at their disposal who had more than a few year's experience), the Sorcerer Supreme hadn't noticed the well-aimed attacks at his back, nor the building's design to fold in onto him.

Loki wiped purple blood on his trousers, fingers slick and wet from the corpses of Thanos' armies. Chitauri and Kree soldiers hounded them in droves, spreading chaos where their Master did not. They were currently rushing every Sanctorum they could find – thus Loki and Strange's haste to leave Xandar, ruined and battled on by the last Avengers (and Revengers, Thor would say).

"I'll tell you when my life needs saving."

"Well, since we're on the subject…" Strange coughed and hacked as his sentient cape drug him by the neck out of the rubble, bookcases and displays settling into the cracked foundation of the Sanctum in his path. Blood stained his lips.

"I'm no healer."

"I know." Strange groaned as he, too, settled into his last place of rest. He could see the green shimmer of Loki's magic deflecting a barrage of new attacks and soldiers, no larger than required to protect them from the horde that descended onto London.

"Well, you're good as dead." Loki's force field nipped at his heels as he came closer, walking through the fallen wall, and cocooned them further. He knelt again at his side, and, exhausted, eventually folded his legs into a seated position. "What terrible company to die with."

"I knew we'd find something to agree on eventually."

"It was bound to happen," he nodded, grinning despite their dire circumstance. "And now it's time for you to go wherever you mortals go."

"Wouldn't you know where that is, _God_?"

Loki ignored the blatant sarcasm, reminiscent of Stark's.

"Unless you've been dancing nude under a pagan moon, bathed in sacrificial blood, raging wars with my father's name on your lips, then, no, I don't," his smile was softer, but still sharp around the edges. "You'll know none of Valhalla, Stephen Strange. It seems the war is lost."

Stephen groaned. The world was spinning in slow measures, his vision tunneling and bleeding red. _Internal hemorrhage,_ he checked, habitually diagnosing himself, _concussion. Three- no, ow- four cracked ribs. Broken clavicle. Broken spine? I can still feel my toes… Shattered wrists. Shattered hands. Shattered hands, again, again, oh god, not again not again **notagain**_.

"Giving up so fast?" he grit his teeth to the pain, but every breath brought agony. He cursed every god he could think of, from Dormammu to Odin to Mephisto himself.

"I never give up." Loki passed his hand over Stephen's face and, quite suddenly, he felt numb. Every part of him went mercifully lax. "But I doubt you'd hand that stone over to me. By the time I'd convince you, Corvus, Maw, or Thanos himself might've come to claim it."

 _The Eye._ "Why'dyou want it…?" His mouth felt heavy, like an overly zealous anethesiologist had gone to town on him. But the words came out clearly enough. "You can't… can't start it over, he'll still be coming… Can't change time, we'll be worse off. There are laws."

"Laws? Hardly seems important now. It's the end of the world and there's someone I need to speak to." There was a crack of lightning and an immediate bout of thunder, heralding Thor's undoubted return. "A thing or two I might fetch."

Loki's barrier seemed to draw smaller, closer, making them not so different than corpses in a body bag. On the other side, Kree and Chituari clawed and shot at its power, sending bursts of light chasing the lines of old languages embedded in its core. Spells Stephen could barely read… Ancient, old, older than him, maybe even the Ancient One herself…

"Worse off… Loki… Worse off."

"What's worse off than this?" He leaned back on one hand. Looking up at him, Stephen could see the lines of war etched into his face, his skin pale and beaded with sweat. He was hardly better for their efforts; blood tricked from a cut in his scalp, leaving long, dark streaks of red that stretched down underneath his clothing. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, dislocated at the shoulder, and a deep gash had been clawed out just beneath his ribcage. His breathing had since been ragged. "The end of the world, Strange, if not the universe itself."

"What do you care… about the universe…" He choked on the blood pooling in his throat, turning his head to spit it out on the concrete. "…New York, ruined. Asgard gone."

Oh, how they could've used Asgard's help. The smile on Loki's face was wry as he thought of dead things, but his focus remained. He considered this last chance carefully.

"As that fool said – because I live in it."

They shared the same memory, wrought from the wreckage of Xandar: the Lord of Stars, skewered though the heart by the staff of Proxima Midnight. Gamora's anguished cry and she ripped the poisoned blade from his chest, held him in her arms as he said something ridiculous, as he was wont to do, and passed on into his next life – _Loki thought of Kurse, of Thor, of the dark sands of Svartalfheim and wanted to retch, wanted to cry, wanted leave this place because no, that couldn't have been the face that Thor made when he died, when he took the blade, when he passed on into Niflheim and somehow woke from the fogs of the dead –_ and then silenced. Proxima's laughing smile never left her face when Gamora leapt on her, when her nebulous sister followed, and together they tore the woman limb from limb. Loki remembered thinking that he'd never seen a tree cry before.

"Because _we_ live in it," he continued, hunching forward to wipe dirt from his eyes. "And, to be quite honest with you, because I always saw the Nine ending by my hand. Not his."

There was silence. Loki's barrier fit them more like a skin now, growing weaker as he did, but every time an alien hand came out to touch it, they were rocketed backwards into their comrades. Bullets and concentrated energy shots still bounced off, but it grew thinner with every blast.

"What do we have to lose, Sorcerer Supreme? Hope is gone, success is a dream."

With all the dramatic effect Loki could have wished for, the Kree quieted. The Chitauri ceased fire. He, suddenly in a panic, flung himself over Stephen so he was, by all rights, straddling the dying man. Protecting him. (Protecting the stone.) This dramata was certainly not of his making.

Thanos was coming.

"Take it," Stephen allowed, holding weakly to the hem of his protesting cape. "Take it… But only with my trust…"

And so Loki did, without hesitation, yanking the pendant free from its strings. He felt the crawl of orange magic dancing up his skin, pressed upon him by the sorcerer, and simply sighed. Binding spells. _Only with his trust._ Save the world or this curse will destroy you – yes, he understood how these things worked. Too exhausted to combat it, it seeped into his seidhr unchallenged, infiltrating him, and he was forced to allow it.

It was the least he could do.

"With your trust, Stephen. I'll fix it. You have my word."

The spell settled. The Infinity Stone glimmered green in his hands and, with a wish, the world suddenly disappeared.

Thanos cursed his name as the world tumbled into darkness.


	2. Red, Green, and Black

Loki woke, as if startled from a terrible dream, in the dirt. He lay squarely on his back, staring up into a sky that couldn't possibly belong to Midgard. That one was blue even in the darkest of times. Even when he'd ripped a galactic hole in the middle of it. If it had been turned to this sorry shade of green and black… No, that couldn't possibly be, he thought. This wasn't Earth.

All his pains of the battle on Xandar were gone. London's aches had melted away. As the winds carried black clouds across the sky above him, Loki had the unfortunate instinct to start breathing again.

Agony ripped through his chest, blinding him with white-hot pain.

 _Kurse._

It was a while before the torture ebbed enough to allow him sight, but when it did, he found himself on hands and knees, retching the contents of his stomach onto the black sands of Svartalfheim.

 _Too early…_ His arms trembled underneath his own weight. Gracelessly, he felt flat on the ground and curled into his own pain.

 _"I didn't do it for him."_

The words were still ripe on his lips. Death still loomed over him, shrouding him in the cold. Each breath was as if he were inhaling blades. He remembered this – the pain, the confusion, the absolute agony of a Dark Elf's curse rolling through him. Consuming him. Eating away at his sanity, at the very veins of seidhr that made him Loki.

But he remembered something else, too, which was far more important than any of his struggles.

There was no Thanos. No Black Order. No dying Sorcerer Supreme, no alliances, no Xandar, no Guardians, Wakandans, Revengers or Avengers estranged. There _was_ Midgard, now, and Asgard. Even Sakaar. The Avengers were whole and righteous; the Guardians remained a mystery, unknown in this quadrant of the galaxy; the Grandmaster, Valkyrie, and that chaotic trash heap of a planet was yet to come. Sif, Fandral, Volstagg, and Hogun - all alive, untouched by Hela's wrath. Thor still had Mjolnir at his side—

 _Thor._ Loki thought abruptly. Red struck through every thought he had. _Thor. Thor. THOR._

Malekith lived. Odin lived. Thor struggled and Frigga…

Greif hitched anew in his chest. How he had hoped to see her.

But this was no time for old grief. Frigga was dead, long dead to him, but Odin was not.

Loki struggled into a seated position with slow, damning movements. An exploratory assessment of himself confirmed that the wound from Kurse's blade had closed, but it offered no explanation as to how. It still burned. Blood and pus weeped beneath his cut clothing, but he was alive.

Just like before, Loki could not remember the moments between dying and living. That would have to remain.

It was impossible to know how long it took him to gather the strength to stand, but when he did, he found his salvation half-buried in the black sand.

The Time Stone gleamed when he picked it up, gingerly rolling it between his fingers.

"Thank you, Stephen," he said quietly, "May we both find better lives in sacrifice."

* * *

In the guise of the Einherjar, Loki approached his father. Odin stood alone and burdened on Asgard's throne.

Despite all he remembered – _"I love you, my sons,"_ – some things couldn't be forgiven. A lifetime of half-hearted parenting and secrets hadn't been forgotten. From Jotunheim to Heimdall, to Hela and beyond, there would be no forgiveness for the All-Father from him. Loki's distain couldn't be erased – it could only cool, calmed with time.

"There was no sign of the weapon," said Loki-Einherjar, as he remembered saying it so long ago, "But we found a body."

Odin stared. In the past, Loki had used this moment to scheme his pathway to the throne. To strengthen his resolve to usurp his Father and rightly rule. How was he to have known that the old man would fall into Odinsleep shortly thereafter? After hearing of _Loki's_ death? Surely for Thor, but for him?

"Loki." Odin whispered, and this time he heard the grief hidden beneath the King's front.

Loki-Einherjar smiled, Odin's eye grew wider in offense, and then the glamour fell.

"Aye, Father." He held his arms out wide, no longer chained by the court. "I did die. As I tend to do."

Odin straightened at the back. "I…" His hand twisted warily on Gungnir's shaft. His voice edged towards anger, slowly. " _Loki_ – "

"So tell me."

He didn't have time for a teary-eyed reunion. Perhaps that was relief in the All-Father's anxious gaze, or perhaps not. So long as he didn't collapse into an inconvenient coma, Loki frankly didn't care.

"Tell you what?" Odin said, affronted. He turned towards his son. "Where is–"

"No. Don't ask me about Thor." Loki snapped, louder than intended. "Don't you _dare_ ask me about Thor. I've just died, and you fret over him? No. If it's ancient weapons you wish to speak of, if it's elder siblings you want to discuss, I have something else in mind."

The color drained from Odin's face. His knuckles whitened around his spear.

"Loki, what've you done?"

"What've I done?" He laughed, taking several strides backwards to stand underneath the grand decorations of the throne room. Above him was his own painted face, his parents', and Thor's, looking down kindly on the subjects of the court. But there was something more beneath. Thor had once told him as much. "No, Father. What have _you_ done?"

The façade cracked and crumbled under a thunderous wave of green magic, torn asunder by his rage alone. Thor would've been proud.

"Tell me about her," Loki demanded. Plaster and stone bounced off a thin, green barrier as they rained down on him, revealing Asgard's oldest crimes in streaks of red and black. "Tell me about Hela."


	3. Gold

_On the outskirts of the Battle for Xandar, Loki grabbed his brother's arm and hefted him up from the wreckage he'd been thrown into._

 _"I hate to say it, but you know who'd be really useful right now?" Thor spat blood, staining a patch of orange dirt a strange, dark color that reminded Loki distinctly of the Aether. "You know who Thanos would really piss off?"_

 _A juvenile voice cried out in fear and Loki twisted, arm outstretched towards the battle afar. His fingers sparked green. Half a mile away, Proxima Midnight's spear ricocheted dangerously off his hastily casted barrier, sparing Spider-Man an inconvenient hole through his youthful face._

 _Thor clasped his shoulder for balance._

 _"Don't say it." Loki protested, but his shoulders slumped forward in agreement. "Just… don't say it."_

 _A fire-orange portal opened in front of them, revealing Cull Obsidian's back as he loomed over a fallen Iron Man. A flurry of Loki's daggers found home in his spine. There was no energy to smile as the giant oaf staggered away from Stark's crumped form to turn on them._

 _Thor heaved a great sigh and, in slow, tired rotations of his wrist, began to swing Stormbreaker at his side. Thunder rumbled as Cull roared._

 _"Wish we hadn't killed her. That's all."_

* * *

In all his years, Loki had never wondered about the origin of Asgard's gold. It was a constant in his life and, like most consistent things, he never questioned it. Why would he? The glittering palace was nothing more than a reflection of Asgard's alleged greatness – a fortress that contained the royal family, grand, mischievous, or obnoxious as they were. It was his home.

But Hela had posed the question to Thor: _"Where do you think all this gold came from?"_

She, not they, had known how bloody their luxuries were. She'd been the one draining armies into the foundation of the realm eternal; she'd written the names of fallen soldiers in their ledger, pen inked in red.

Standing in front of that great, gilded throne, Loki thought of Thor. How he'd been so crestfallen telling the story of his battle with Hela before the bridge – how she, all-powerful, had dismissed her cruel conquests. Dismissed all the lives lost in Asgard's machinations for power. She'd had no second thought for the destruction and shame, but it weighed so heavy on Thor that Loki had feared that their new King might slip into the same madness he'd once dwelled in.

The dust settled into silence around him, littering the already ravaged hall with slabs of broken plaster and debris. Their shattered stories decorated the pillars that had been felled by the Dark Elves. One of those many pieces lay at his feet: Thor, long-haired and golden, cracked across the face, with Loki at his side.

"Tell me." Loki's barrier shimmered into nothingness. He stepped around the wreckage, pacing closer to the throne. "About Hela."

Asgard's court was ravaged. What had once been a respectful, peaceful homage to the royal family was destroyed. Their murals and golden lines, once defining a soft palate of painterly colors, were struck through with jagged crags of red and black. Horrors festered within. Hela rode on Fenris' back as he bounded through the legions of Einherjar. Odin, two-eyed, rode at her side. The Nine realms lay in ruins by their hands.

Odin One-Eye stared up at the record of his crimes. Trembling, he lowered himself onto the throne, gripping his spear as if it was all that kept him from folding over. Loki's feet found the lowest steps of his pedestal.

"What have you done?" Odin's powerful voice shook with stress, lowered to a tremored whisper.

"Pardon me? What have _I_ done? You _dare_ —"

"What deal have you made with her?"

For the first time, Loki heard fear in his Father's voice. It gave him pause, both in movement and speech.

"What deal?" It took him a moment to dissect the question, longer than he was pleased to admit. Kurse's wound still leaked down his front, poorly healed and stinging from front to back. He did his best to hide how it handicapped his steps. "You… you think I made a deal? With _her_?"

"You claim to have died."

"Died, perhaps, but I've no death wish! I don't know how I returned—"

"Lies!"

Gungnir trembled. Loki's fists trembled stronger.

"Me, lying? That's your accusation?" He ascended one stair at a time, calm and even. It took everything he had not to claw at his chest, growing more painful with every step. "When you wrought that?" He gestured plainly to the depictions above. "All of your lies have led to this! We are here because of you! Just tell me the truth. For once in your life, _tell me the truth!_ "

Odin forced himself to sit straight-backed as Loki found level footing with the throne, but his resolve shook. His steeled expression wavered.

"Your shame will crumple you into sleep, Father. Again."

Memories flashed through his mind; a casket weighing heavily in his hands, deep beneath Asgard. His skin crawling with lightning bolts of blue, consuming him with cold horror. Questions bred in rage, given no answers. Feeble excuses uttered until Odin's strength buckled. They were alone on the stairs of the Vault, Loki's life in pieces around him, and his Father slipped into magical sleep. No one had been quick enough to calm the brewing storm in his heart. Madness...

"Before that happens, you will tell me everything you know about her."

There was silence. It made him acutely aware of the warmth sliding down his midriff, blood slickening skin underneath battered armor. Thor had likely confronted Malekith by now. Odin was supposed to have fallen into sleep. There were still things he needed to know.

"While there is still power in these old bones, she'll be locked away. While I have the throne… she will never…" Odin's eyelids fell heavy and, for a heartbeat's second, Loki let his do the same. Lightheadedness was rolling over him. Something itched in his ribcage. A slow burn kindled his veins. "That is all you need to know… all you will know, my son…"

He sneered, watching the All-Father with heavy eyes.

"You damn us all."

"Loki."

Odin slumped against his staff. Suddenly, the world went tumultuous, turning in a tight spin to the right. Loki took a knee and grappled for purchase on the slick golden floors. Palming the ground and leaning all his weight onto his hands, he tried to steady himself. The world kept spinning. Every slow breath brought ragged pain to his lungs, tearing him apart from inside.

"Loki…"

 _Too soon,_ he thought. This had been a mistake. Odin would never tell him what he needed to know. Why would he? He never had before.

One hand slipped from under him and he rolled to the floor, hitting his side with a dull thump. The concern in Odin's voice was almost funny.

This had been so much easier last time, he thought. When he'd just wanted the throne, things were so much simpler. Now it was the weight of the universe on his shoulders. He needed to re-evaluate his strategy. He needed time…

Time.

Aching, he reached out for the time stone with a faint pulse of magic. Green light bled from between his fisted fingers, slowly at first, but gradually growing brighter. It felt cool in his palm, summoned from the pocket dimension of his making.

 _I need more time._

The world went dark.


	4. In Between

Snapping into reality wasn't like waking up from a dream. It was blinking and opening your eyes somewhere you weren't supposed to be. Teleportation, in its basest form, was still a mode of transport. It had rules. A start and a beginning, controlled with every step.

This was not that. This was a crack of lightning without clouds or thunder (or Thunder God). This was a knife wound without entry. This was reality stuttering, time twisting, breath catching, heart-stopping– Loki blinked and the palace floor beneath his cheek became black sand. When he touched it, it seemed to slip through his hands; he slipped into darkness with it, into death, until life seared back into his lungs like a branding iron and Kurse's blade impaled him, poisoned him, and wordlessly slipped free. His wounds knit back together with painful precision, erased forever. Thor's scream died where it started. Jane Foster bled red with infinity. Loki hatched a plan - a promise - with shackles around his wrists. Time corkscrewed farther into oblivion. Then was now and now was then. _She wouldn't want us to fight._ He raced backwards through the paths between realms. _If it were easy, everyone would do it._ Before that, his brother's friends promised him death. Sif's blade slipped away and then he screamed with grief, wrought with agony. A white cell with golden walls, his trappings, his eternal punishment… Frigga, Queen of Asgard, his mother, his only mother, _why did he say she wasn't his mother_ , was dead–

All of that in an instant.

He opened his eyes a heartbeat after he'd closed them. White light blinded him and he gasped for air as if someone had pulled him, drowning, out of the sea. Phantom pains roamed through his body. Shock rendered him paralyzed, sharp and unforgiving as his mind tried to sort out the present.

 _Kurse. Mother._

Blinking once, he found time resumed; blinking twice, he realized the stone was fisted behind his head. Something soft pillowed it, that arm bent back to support it. The other hand was outstretched, waiting—

A small pewter cup promptly missed his hand and smacked him squarely in the nose with a painful _crack._

"Bor's blood!"

Pain chased away paralysis. The time stone slipped from his fingertips as he wrenched himself upright, cupping his face and gingerly assessing the damage. Nothing was broken, but by the Norns… that hurt.

Loki reached down and picked up the offending piece of tableware. It was nothing more than a small bronzed cup, barely large enough to be useful in its one purpose. But he recognized it. He remembered it. Tossing it up and down, whittling away at eternity.

He was back in his cell.

The cup forgotten, Loki planted his feet on the floor and rose from the feather bed that no other prisoners were afforded. This was his imprisonment, before Malekith. Before Svartalfheim. After Midgard, after his cheery little talk with Odin, and long after he had last seen Thor on the Bifrost.

If it was time he was looking for, it was time he'd found.

But when exactly was this moment? That he couldn't pinpoint, not yet. All these days had dissolved into a blur of white boredom, punctuated by a beginning and an end; his Father angered, his mother dead. Everything in between wasn't worth remembering.

Slowly, he made his way around the room. Everything was as he remembered it. A bed, a washbasin, a bookcase, and a chair. A leather-bound book spread face-down over its arm. Random luxuries scattered throughout the cell, all of it smuggled goods from the Queen of Asgard. These were her small acts of defiance against her King-husband. Her small acts of kindness for her youngest son.

Cautioning himself not to give the guards any reason to pay more attention to him than they already did – which was, in fact, very little, as they had learned better than to pester him – Loki lowered himself into the cushioned armchair, plucking the book up from its resting place. Quietly, he thumbed through its contents.

 _Peacebringers of Asgard, Volume III_

A dreadfully boring text that glorified his Father's Wars across the realms. He remembered it with little fondness, but now it made bile rise in his throat. The conquest of the realms was nothing more than hunger and greed perpetrated by a father and daughter. War brought swiftly, and peace brought slower.

History was written by the winners. Loki knew that well enough. Knowing the truth of it, though - of Odin or Hela, of himself - only bittered him further. Ignorance was bliss, they said, and perhaps they were right; historically, Loki had been far better off when kept in the dark.

This particular volume focused on the Wars of Jotunheim, the Jotnar themselves, and Odin's eventual victory in the realm. Frigga had given this to him in some misguided attempt to help him understand his origins, he supposed. It wasn't likely to change his opinions. Not that those really mattered – he'd come to peace with his heritage, at least in a small measure. _The Tragedy of Prince Loki_ came to mind and he smirked, forever amused by himself.

If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that this moment was before the Dark Elves had attacked. The other cells around him looked perfectly normal, caging perfectly abnormal sorts of criminals. The usual lot. Ravagers, beasts, enemies of the realm (himself included), and rabble-rousers.

Imprisonment offered the opportunity to think. To plan. For once, he had plenty of time.

Loki raised his hand and the Infinity Gem rocketed from his bed to his palm, gleaming innocently in the bright lights when he rolled it between his fingers. He wouldn't make the mistake of secreting it away again. It needed to be close. To be used in an instant, in case the worst were to happen.

He left his armchair and book to stand, pacing over to the washbasin and the silver mirror that hung in midair above it. Appearances meant little in the dungeons, but he was a prince. That afforded him the right to vanity. Were he to be kept away here to gather dust until someone had need of him – and they would – he refused to be found in some sort of disarray. He'd be as he was when they'd left him here: regal, poised, and (allegedly) gone half-mad.

Watching his reflection, all that seemed less important now. Pride was a useless effort at the end of the world. Vanity a luxury.

But this was not the end of the world, Loki reminded himself. Not yet.

Washing his face, inhaling sharply through his nose when all the water had dripped away, he summoned his armor from beyond. It was the fashion from before Sakaar and its ludicrous Grandmaster. The sharp lines of Asgardian craftwork shaped his shoulders in boxed corners, the leather bindings of his dagger's keepings wrapped about his torso, and the long, heavy duster draped over it all, gleaming with patches of golden plating. But what he cared about most was the gold band that swept across his chest. A decoration of a mage's calling, crafted of uru, shining and powerful. It was a malleable, generous metal that did well with enchantment.

Surely it would do well to house an infinity.

Loki cast an illusion of himself walking away from the basin and returning to the armchair to distract others from seeing his work. Cloaked with a small barrier of invisibility, he took the Infinity Gem and held it up to his chest, carefully casting spells to bind it into the lowest point of metal. He couldn't say what Thanos' gauntlet had been made of, or even the origin of the spear he'd had on Midgard. But if an android could walk around with the mind stone embedded on his head, surely the most magic-rich metal in the known realms could handle concentrated singularities.

It took some time. After sweat had thoroughly dampened his brow, after his fingers burned from the constant bite of magic, the gem was coaxed into the metal, eased onto it like a feather fallen on water. It glimmered on his chest, uru shining as if freshly polished. Loki, suddenly calmed, felt stronger despite his exertion, and looked up to his reflection.

His eyes were as green as a galaxy. His fingers, healed. His mind calm and clean. Revitalized, green sparks of infinity jolted between his fingertips.

Oh, it was no wonder why Thanos was so fond of these little trinkets. With just this one stone he could take the realms by storm. Wind the Nine around one finger, make them his own, before taking it in hand and—

" _Aargh_!"

A searing pain shot up his arm at the mere thought of destruction, catching him off guard and folding him at the stomach in surprise. He staggered back, tucking his arm into his chest, rattling around in the pain until it shot all the way up through his shoulder and into his teeth, clawing inside his skull. It tasted like a needle dipped in poison. Rotten fruit of Idunn's orchard. Magic with a sharp, sterile bite. His seidhr rose up only to go dry on his tongue when he tried to speak it.

 _"With my trust,"_ a ghost reminded. Its flat tone echoed a million times between his ears, growing louder with each saying.

Loki cursed.

"All right, all right!"

It stopped the moment he dismissed all thoughts of conquest. With a pounding ache forming behind his eyes, he tore away his bracers to take a closer look at his suspicions.

A gleaming orange mantra of Midgardian design was burning like a brand on his forearm.

"Damn you, Strange."

It was just a whisper. A memory of the binding spell that had been snuck into his bones at the last second. A leash with nothing attached at the other end but a promise. A vague, very hard to circumvent oath that Loki would only do what Strange trusted him to do – to save the world.

Conquering it himself didn't fall into those guidelines, apparently. Compared to the future, his rule was certaintly a world saved, Loki thought blandly. He wouldn't be as tyrannical – or homicidal – as Thanos. Or so he claimed.

Refastening his bracer on his arm, covering up the brand-like tattoo of Midgardian magic, he resolved that, for once, he would have to be _good._ As in, God-of-Thunder-good.

How droll.

Sighing, he pressed his hand up against the gold barrier that held him in his cell and leaned forward. The illusion of himself at the armchair dispersed.

"Guard." He was still a Prince. They would heed his call. There was no _Tragedy of Loki_ play to oust him yet. "I've a message for my brother."

One guard came stiffly to the edge of his cell, stamping his spear on the ground in salute.

"As you say, my Prince."

"Tell him." Loki smiled a bit too kindly, "That I did have a good reason for doing this."

Before the unfortunate Einherjar had time to do anything more than widen his eyes, Loki pressed the heel of his palm into the barrier, summoned the energy of the infinity stone on his chest, and shattered his cell as easily as he could strike a blade through bone. It shattered into a million pieces of golden light.

By the time the shards settled on stone, he'd disappeared.

Four cells down, Kurse decided to press a man's face into his trappings and claim his freedom much the same.

War was coming.


	5. Warm Regards

Loki blinked back into reality on the other side of the dungeon doors, took two steps at a time down the the staircase to the right, and ignored all sounds of chaos erupting behind him. Thor would be coming with the Warriors Three soon enough to calm the uprising. They'd be on the hunt the moment they found him missing from his cell.

A second right, a first left; he knew these winding hallways and endless staircases from years of mischief making. How could he forget? The Vault had guarded secrets as well as treasures, truths that Loki would've preferred not to know. Odin's shames and glories all in the same place.

Throwing himself around the final bend to arrive at the Vault, left unguarded as Einherjar stormed the dungeons, he pushed open the stone doors without a moment's pause.

Magic beat in his chest like a drum as he found the shimmering blue box that called to the time stone. The Tesseract. Blue, beautiful, and gleaming, sitting idly on a stone pedestal next to a pot of eternal flame and a bowstring relic of Alfheim's past. As if it weren't the most powerful thing in this room.

The ceiling rumbled with Thor's anger and Loki spun on his heel, warding the door shut. It would barely hold against Mjolnir, but it would have to do. There were things that must be done.

Rushing down the last staircase, he allowed no time for carefulness as he approached the Tesseract. Loki slammed his hand down on top of the blue box, cracking its cubic glass. Another hit rendered it shattered – a million raindrop shards fell from the pedestal in a flash of white-blue light, nearly blinding in its intensity.

Loki felt a rush of a familiar power sweep over him, a soft voice tempting him for all the powers in the realms. Oh, it would be so easy…

His arm threatened to burn and he sighed, taking the small blue gem from its bed of glass. It was easier this time, fusing it with the uru next to the time stone. But this was not the only goal of his visit.

He moved onward and the Vault seemed to slow, time and space softening its edges. Every step towards the main pedestal in the back of the room felt as if he were walking on the Bifrost bridge, or perhaps the branches of Yggdrasil – it felt like walking on magic. A cool, calming sensation spread up through his body, whispering promises of power. Time trembled at his fingertips. Space vowed to bend to his will. It would be so easy to become drunk on it, easier still to do whatever he pleased.

Fortunately, what he pleased was in line with what Strange needed him to do, so there were no mystical protests when he brushed his hand through the Eternal Flame and took a fistful of its magic in hand. The world sang as his other hand sparked blue with the space stone's influence.

 _Show me,_ he demanded. _Show me her legacy._

A portal tore open the ground of the Vault, marble slab crumbling away as it if had never been. Through it, he glimpsed the dead past. Odin's greatest shame. The fallen soldiers of Hela's armies, and her magnificent prize resting dead in front of their tombs.

"Fenrir wolf," Loki whispered, as the time stone offered its name. "Hello, you bloody nightmare."

He fell through the portal into the darkness of the tomb, landing quietly on his feet. The only light cast in this abandoned hall was the one from the eternal flame in his palm, eerie and cold. Not a single draugr stood to meet it, remaining peacefully still. These walls were stacked high with their tombs, dusty and forgotten. Unloved. Forsaken. What a sad, pitiful end for the conscripted of Asgard.

Fenrir wolf lay bound in the middle of it all. Patches of fur were missing all over, the rot eating down to his bones, but Loki remembered this beast as something more. Something terrifying and efficiently deadly, nearly equal to the Hulk.

Cautiously, he approached its corpse. Contacting Hela was no easy task. Through Odin's influence it would be impossible by normal means. Travel to Niflheim - or Hel itself - involved measures he dare not take. Speaking to the dead required being of their realm; he would have to die, which was more than a minor inconvenience. Space stone or not, he wouldn't walk their realm without guaranteed means of return.

This wolf, however, was already halfway where he needed to be.

 _Show me,_ he willed, and the stone over his heart burned bright green. _Show me how much she cared._

Time whipped around him like a storm, its scenes tinted green and gleaming white around the edges. In the future, he saw the ghost of Hela standing where he did.

 _"What have they done to you?" She asked, receiving no answer from the only thing that had ever cared to listen to her. Fenrir wolf lay dead at the hands of Asgard, of Odin, and she rest her forehead against his as the Eternal Flame burned him back to life. "I'll fix it, darling."_

Gently, Loki placed his hand on the body. The future faded away and time settled around him, the Eternal Flame burning bright in his palm.

"Well, darling," Loki drawled, sarcastic as could be. The flame began to burn green. "Tell your mother that Loki sends his warmest regards."


	6. Brother

Days after the Svartalfar Invasion, Loki was back in his cell sporting a bruise around his right eye.

Shortly after he'd ripped open a portal to Hel and sent that massive hound back to its master, Thor had rooted him out of the ancient tombs and beat him into sorry submission.

Not that it mattered, he thought, examining his wounds in his reflection over the washbasin. Kurse had not taken the stairs to the left because he'd not been here to tell him to. Frigga lived. Thor had been too busy beating him to pay any attention to the stones embedded in his armor.

It had taken every ounce of his restraint not to use them. Every modicum of self control. Valkyrie would've been impressed, he thought. She'd always been the first to knock them out of their quarrels.

 _"It's not always about you, you morons. Stop fighting and lead, or I'll have the Big Guy settle you two down next time."_

It would've been so easy to step out of the shadow and put Thor in his place. Just this once. But it would've gained him nothing, so he took the brunt of his brother's frustration. He'd been the perfect, compliant prisoner when they'd put him back in his cell.

Carefully, he touched the blackened circle underneath his eye. Purple veins spread underneath his fingers, an illusion cast to worsen his injuries. The stones had him healing far too quickly. Appearances had to be kept, even in captivity. There was no telling when he'd get a visitor.

Stepping back from the mirror and lowering himself into bed, he threw his feet up to sit back against the ornate headboard. Absently rubbing at his chest – a glamor of prison linen over armor, disguising the stones from sight – he let his mind wander. Let himself feel the power that now tugged at the veins of his seidhr.

The space stone was a familiar sensation. Comforting it was not, but it was refreshing to have endless energy back at his beck and call without the Black Order meddling with his mind. Instead of rattling him, it fueled him. There was no limit to his spellcasting. He could twist the world as he saw fit. Cut through space with portals of his own design.

No dungeon or cell could hold him, if he wished it. Odin himself would be helpless to stop him. That thought alone offered him enough freedom to keep him content in Asgard's dungeons. For now.

The time stone was altogether different from its sibling. Its energy was equally vast, but it promised knowledge more than sustenance. Everything would spread out before him if asked. All actions, all consequences. The end and the beginning of everything. Every single secret the universe had to hold was at hand with that little gem on his chest.

Still, nothing had changed. He could see himself at the end of all things, holding Stephen Strange in his arms. Making a promise and going back in time, caught in a loop. Time appeared to be linear – he could double back on it as many times as he liked, but he knew, somehow, that too much change could cause a fracture. The trunk of this tree had already grown. Whatever he did, he had to do it to change his future. The branches of time were his concern, not the base. All the eventualities and possible futures that he'd seen were made of the same stock. His task was only to find the winning branch.

However, that future was blurry, rainbowed in fragmented light cast by the infinity stones. Its secrets were unclear to him. But he could see her sillouhette burning in the light; Hela, of Asgard, of Hel, standing with her antlered crown in a sea of blades.

"Loki."

He opened his eyes, snapping back into the present to meet the angry gaze of his brother.

"Finally come to visit?" There wasn't a single moment of hesistation in his response. He spoke as clearly as he had last time, trying to remember the words they'd shared. Everything considered, he already preferred this conversation over the last. "Or have you come to gloat? To mock?"

"Loki, enough."

Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, the smile that curved his lips was nothing less than wicked.

"Enough of what? Tell me, how is it that you only ever visit me in a cell when you want something?" Taking to his feet, he paced towards Thor. The thin barrier of his cell separated them. "It's either to keep me in it or to cut me loose for your own interests. Not that I'm complaining."

"Loki-"

"Let me guess: the Bifrost has been closed to you, Odin's ears are deaf, and Mother won't enable your mischief?" Thor's surprise danced blatantly across his face and Loki folded his hands behind his back, preening. "It's all very predictable, trust me. But if you're so desperate as to come to me for help, you know I'll not act without recompense."

Thor shifted uneasily, but managed to keep his resolve.

"You're not the man I once knew. My brother isn't in you anymore. I won't free you from your sentence."

"Well, I can't dispute that." Thor would learn who he'd become, given time. Once he had to suffer through Sakaar and Ragnarok the same as he had. "Persuade me, then. Whyever would I help you if you're just to return me here?"

A ghost of a smile passed over his brother's face. He attempted unsuccessfully to straighten it back into a flat line.

"Really?"

Loki laughed.

"I see. My help in exchange for the opportunity to escape."

"Aye. The opportunity. Since you'll try anyway."

Yes, he much preferred this meeting over the last.

"Then when do we start?"

* * *

Ultimately, it didn't matter how many times he went back or forwards. How many times they fought Malekith. Whether Frigga died or lived. Odin would not speak. Fenrir never returned. Hela never attempted contact. Loki looped back and forth from Asgard to the Dark World, to living and dying. Living beyond that tragedy, experiencing Sakaar again, only to find Stephen Strange dying in front of him.

 _"With my trust."_

Time always looped back.

The eighty-second time Loki found himself in his cell, Fenrir freed, he lounged back in his armchair and stewed in frustration.

What was he missing?

Hela of Ragnarok never so much as blinked twice in his direction. Never. He'd lived through the end of his world thirty-ones times now, each almost a carbon copy of the last, and never got any further for it. Hela attempted her conquest. Surtur was summoned and Asgard demolished. The wolf was as vicious as ever, not a single glimmer of mercy in his eyes.

What had he overlooked?

The Grandmaster was a useless resource. Loki had tried twenty-three times to pry information from his painted lips, but it was always nonsense and dismissal. Valkyrie wouldn't speak to him about the fall of her sisters but to say that Odin had sent them to Hel.

Twice, he'd lived it all the way back through to the start. Through the fall of Xandar and the invasion of Earth. Sitting in the Sanctum with Doctor Strange, bargaining for the time stone he already had. It all started over, one fading out of existence the moment he held two, and he woke in the throne room. Later traveling further back to his cell.

The time stone showed him millions of possibilities and none of them gave him any answers. Death was beyond the grasp of its infinite power, it seemed, which rendered it not so infinite at all.

Sighing, he took back up the volume his mother had left them and thumbed through its pages. All the stories of Hela's conquests with her written out of them.

What was there left to do?

The only thing he hadn't done was speak to Hela directly. No opportunity had ever arisen. Thor always kept her busy during Ragnarok. Loki was resigned to leading Korg's strange rebellion to Asgard with the cargo ship, or there would be no means for the Asgardians to escape.

Talking to her was the answer, but she was always beyond him. Niflheim was impregnable. Hel even more so. He'd have to die to find her there. Any other way was by dark magic, a resource which he did not have at his disposal. Heimdall, past or present, was no friend of his.

"Loki," Thor said, and the answer abruptly snapped together like the pieces of a puzzle.

He'd have to die.

How fortunate that he'd been doing that all along.

* * *

This time he went to the Dark World with a different plan. Fighting the battle was muscle memory after all these times, white-faced elves falling with cut bellies and curses. Thor raged as loudly as he pleased against Malekith. Jane Foster released the Aether – the reality stone, a thing that Loki had never been able to get his hands on – and it shattered into a million ruby fragments above them. The Lady Jane wouldn't have done him any favors in any possible reality, but this time he thought she cringed less when he sheilded her with his body.

Eventually, the time came. Kurse moved to kill Thor and skewered Loki instead.

Thor anguished. Jane held Loki's hand as his brother cradled him, squeezing gently. He wasn't altogether sure why. Perhaps he had been kinder to her, this time. The eighty-third time.

"I didn't do it for him," he said, as he always did. Convulsions racked him until his last breath.

It was with that last, trembling breath that he clutched his chest and waited. Waited for that last thread of consciousness k to pull taught, threatening endless darkness. It was only then that he willed time to stop.

So it did.

Loki blinked, barely alive, mostly dead, and stared up at the dark skies of Svartalfheim. Thor's agony was frozen on his face. Jane's hand was ice around his. The clouds didn't move while silence reigned, all of the universe slowing to a tired halt.

Green lined his vison. He lay in his brother's arm for a while, watching the motionless sky.

This was death. He'd never been able to remember it before. How strange, he mused. Stranger still that Odin's glamor hadn't fallen away to reveal the blue underneath.

By the time death's fog rolled in, cohesive thought was a struggle. Purgatory proved torturous on the senses. He barely saw the mist shifting in front of his face, unable to focus long on anything. Barely felt the cold bite his fingertips. It was as if millennia had passed in a handful of seconds. His thoughts wandered to his mother, to his father and brother... to Midgard and Asgard and Sakaar... to the Sorcerer Supreme branding his arm. To the end of the world. The Black Order, Thanos... Mother... Kurse, Malekith... Jane, Heimdall, and Mjolnir. Stormbreaker was all well and good, but Mjolnir would always be better. A hammer of Asgard's make, of it's wars and heirs. History and worthiness, forged in the heart of a dying star... A million stars, dying. Blinking out. Supernovas burning away reality.

"Well…"

Something cold and wet touched the back of his head, nudging him rudely out of the haze of his disjointed thoughts. It took all his effort to bend his neck back to look, still holding the Lady Jane's hand.

Fenrir wolf stared down his snout at him, a woman in tattered green and black clothes leaning into his massive side. Her smile brought horror to his heart.

"…Took you long enough, brother dear."


	7. Bargain

To his credit, Loki managed to remain calm.

Hela stared down at him as she leaned into the side of her giant wolf, the fogs of Niflheim swirling around them like a shroud. Beyond her, there was only darkness. Darkness and the promise of permanent death through a mist door of her making, leading down a long, dark hallway, lit only by green-fire braziers that cast eerie shadows with unnatural light. Hel's Hall, Loki knew. For the young, the old, the dishonored and weak souls that passed on without rights to Valhalla. A place he never wanted to venture.

"Hela. Fenrir." The wolf made some sort of whining sound at being acknowledged, shaking his massive head. Hela stood away from him, black mist trailing in her wake as he shed black ash from his fur. Loki's neck strained as he watched her, still craned back over Thor's embrace. "I suppose I must be dead. Lovely."

The Queen of Death rolled her eyes, disgust curling her lips. Loki wasn't blind to the way she circled around him.

"Get up."

"Yes. Where are my manners?" Disorienting as this all was, he managed to roll out of Thor's lap and away from the Lady Jane to stumble to his feet, moving low into a sweeping bow. "I am Loki, of Asgard, Odinson, God of Mischief and—"

"Liar," Hela interrupted, her disdain slipping away into boredom. She approached in slow, purposeful steps and Loki matched it with an equal retreat, stepping backwards until he bumped into the massive leg of Fenrir. Perhaps that was better than stumbling backwards into Niflheim proper, but he had no escape when she took his face in hand, pinning him against her pet. "You're no son of Odin."

Loki tried to smile against her hold. "Perceptive. Loki Laufeyson, then, the rightful King of Jotunheim and heir to the Frost Throne. Adopted by Odin."

Fenrir grumbled his displeasure with their nonsense, moving himself away from their conversation. Loki stumbled back when the massive leg was swept away, the wolf stretching out to lay in front of the misted pathway back home.

"Hm." Hela let him go, unimpressed. "How many titles can you fit into that mouth of yours?"

Flexing his jaw, Loki faked amusement when he looked back to her. He massaged the strange coldness her touch left on his skin.

"As many as I need."

Her gaze swept over him in two agonizing passes. He steadied himself, fighting his instinct to take a defensive stance. She was not a danger to him, not yet. Offending her would get him nowhere and all would be for naught.

"Why are you here, Stonekeeper?"

Foolishly, thoughtlessly, Loki reached for the band of uru about his chest. There was nothing there but linen. _No, no, no._ His armor was gone. The stones—

"Lost something?" she crooned.

Panic gripped him, abrupt and overwhelming. Mists swirled around his ankles. Without a second thought for the consequences, his stance shifted low, spreading his weight evenly as he his hands twitched for knives that weren't there. No spells crackled between his fingertips. Gods, he was a fool. A dead fool.

"Where are they, witch?"

Hela laughed. A black blade bled out of her wrist, mocking him. She twirled it in her hand.

"Witch? Certainly not. Goddess? Yes."

"Where are they?!"

Fenrir's jaw snapped at Loki's outburst, but Hela shushed him from afar. The beast's growl seemed to rumble this realm-between-realms.

"Come now, little Prince. Turn around. Remember what you are."

"What... What I am?"

Cautiously, Loki complied, turning back toward the timeless scene he'd rolled out of. Thor and Jane, holding him. His body limp, skin grey, veins of black poisoning his blood… All of it, still there. His body separate from himself. The stones shining dimly on his dead chest.

Swallowing down the rising dread, he looked at himself for the first time.

His hands were blue. Raised markings played across his skin and he remembered seeing these for the first time, on Jotunheim, in the grip of a creature he called monster.

"You're dead." Hela's voice in his ear, her breath on his neck, but when he spun back around she was standing with her wolf, paying his soft affections. His hands trembled at his sides. "This is my domain, little prince. Little _brother_. You're mine. Just the same as Fenrir."

Memories made bile rise in his throat. The Casket of Ancient Winters. Thanos. His imprisonment. Ragnarok.

"I'll not be made a pet. I've died before."

"Yes, I know."

"I've always come back."

"Tricky little thing, then, aren't you?" She shrugged royally, turning to face him. "But I suspect you hardly know how to harness infinity. You toy with it. Nothing more." Before he could open his mouth to retort, Hela was suddenly closer, barely a breath away as her hands found either side of his face. Something like nausea rolled through him, but certainly the dead couldn't feel such things. "Frost giants have no place in Valhalla. You know that. And you'll find there's no Valkyrie to plead your case to. So yes, you're mine."

If there were blood in his veins, it would've gone cold. Valkyrie's stolen memories steeled him, a painful reminder of who this woman was. The Goddess of Death. Odin's greatest shame. Asgard's conqueror – his executioner. Blinder of Thor. Destroyer of armies. Hela Victorious would be ruler of all things, living or dead.

"But I owe you a debt." Her voice was softer, now. Fenris wolf folded his front paws to rest his mighty head upon them. "You've brought me a companion in my eternal confinement. Given him life."

Hela freed his face and Loki steadied himself, shuddering in the cold that was slowly seeping into his bones. Black mists swirled higher now, twining up his legs in tendrils. How they goaded him to walk forward, to pass through the mist door and explore the Halls of the Dead. It would be so easy...

"A strange predicament," he managed, focusing on her, "Goddess of Death, in debt."

"Don't play coy with me, blue one."

"You'd give me my life in recompense for his?"

"Once," she nodded.

"Shame that I have two favors to ask, then."

Hela, Goddess of Death and Infinite Disdain, folded her arms across her chest. He seemed to have her attention, limited as it may be. Yet as she stood in front of her massive hound, who relaxed like a guardian in front of death's doorway, Loki was taken by how odd the sight was. No great antlers adorned her brow. No cape; just clothes, closely tailored, tattered and torn. This was not the woman he had known – or would come to know. This was Hela defeated, ruling over nothing but the dead. And he knew what she wanted more than anything.

"Go on," she said, in a way that clearly expressed her patience was thin.

"I'll loosen the curse Odin put on you."

Her eyes widened only by a fraction, the reaction tightly controlled. Skepticism layered her reaction.

"How?"

"How else? By killing him, of course." Gesturing back to his corpse, the infinity stones seemed to gleam on his chest. "You're the Goddess of Death. Death is not bound by time. Can't you see beyond now?"

The question was a subtle probe for information. Loki wouldn't kill his father. He couldn't. Yet Odin would die all the same and he would make sure that Hela would never know the exact circumstances.

"Death itself is timeless. Not I. This is living exile; I pass through eternity as you do. Or as you should."

Perfect.

"Then I'll kill him, or I'll find a way to break your chains. Then you can do it yourself. Return to Asgard. Rule in your rightful place." He shrugged, smiling wickedly. "My brother has no knack for it. Perhaps you do."

"You set high stakes in this bargain. Killing the All-Father? Even at my best, I failed."

"Odin is old, now. Falls into the Odinsleep more than ever before. It can be done."

"A coward's kill."

"A kill nonetheless. Still, I ask a high price in return. And if I fail, which I won't, then we've both lost nothing."

The frozen sands of Svartalfheim crunched beneath her heel as she walked towards him, menacing even in her disarray. Fenrir returned to his feet to follow at her back, teeth bared to intimidate.

"Your price?"

Loki stood tall, knowing he had faced worse than the wrath of his sister. Strange's brand pulsed softly against his forearm. Whether in warning or support, he was unsure.

"…I've seen it. The future. I lived it. The stones brought me here, before the universe ended."

"Ragnarok?"

"No. Thanos."

Hela blinked once. Fenrir snapped at him again, growling. Whatever good nature he'd had for Loki was long gone. Hela didn't lift her hand to stay him.

"Thanos."

"You know him?"

"No." She looked over her shoulder as Fenrir sat back on his haunches, tipping his head towards the cloudy sky to howl. The sound was mournful, reverberating in Loki's chest like a sorrowful song. The beast knew. But how?

Ragnarok, he thought. The end of all things. Started by Surtur, ending in Asgard's destruction. But it hadn't worked - they'd survived.

 _Oh._

"The Eternal Flame burns you." Loki whispered, bravely stepping around Hela to touch the upper reaches of Fenrir's chest. Tentatively, he offered his comfort. "And death is timeless."

Fenrir knew the end because it burned inside him. The Eternal Flame cared not for prophecy; it cared for truth, destruction, and the finishing blow, in all its forms. Odin or Thanos, Sutur or Hela. It mattered not.

"The Eternal Flame offers no knowledge," Hela protested, but her tone was wary, in half-belief of her own words. "The dead do not know all."

It felt as if her essence were creeping over him, clawing at his skin to crawl beneath. Anger, rage, despair, and anguish gripped his mind, setting black haze through his vision. A promise of her wrath whispered its way into his bones. Quick words would not save him; for all his boasting, this realm was hers. He was at her mercy.

"The Eternal Flame is Ragnarok." To his ears, his voice sounded distant. Fenrir's song echoed farther away, despite his hand on the beast's chest. "He sees it true. Thanos. The universe's end…"

A cold hand gripped his shoulder. Hela was against him, her front to his back, close enough that he'd be helpless to stop her if she decided to send him to a more eternal end. Her breath frosted his cheek.

"…He'll steal it from you," he whispered, his neck like rubber as he looked over his shoulder. "Death. He'll make half the lives of your claim disappear, as if they never existed at all. You and all other Deaths." Her cheek pressed against his, colder than Jotunheim. He shivered. Before she could protest, he made his final proposal. "What a war it would be, too. The most powerful being in the universe... against you."

"Well, then." It was no surprise when she slid a knife into his back. Nor when it elongated, the black blade impaling him through like the one that had sent him here. A perfect fit. "I suppose I'll have to trust you, baby brother."

"What?"

Gagging on a strange taste of his own blood – should he even bleed, in death? – he looked forward and saw Fenrir staring at him, green flames dancing in his eyes. When had he stopped howling?

"Your life for his. My blades for Thanos if you free me from my sentence. You have my oath." The blade slid out of him, or rather, shrunk out, leaving a patchwork of healed skin where Kurse had run him through. "Stonekeeper?"

He closed his eyes, no longer able to keep them open.

"Yes?"

"Don't disappoint me."

Trying desperately to hold onto his consciousness, Loki coughed blue blood and tipped his head towards the dark skies.

"One last thing, sister…"

"Hm?" Her breath was sweet, so close to him. The way she twisted the knife in his back was less so.

"…Pretend like this never happened."

The world span back, the time stone snapped free its hold on the universe, and the only sound Loki heard was Thor grieving his name. Worlds away, Hela's response reached his mind.

 _"With pleasure."_


	8. Rebirth

Loki lived.

Odin fell into the Odinsleep and he cast his spell, exiling him to Midgard in his time as King. Thor uncovered the plot after he was done parading about his precious Earth. They would go to seek out their Father together.

Odin All-Father, King of Asgard, Ruler of the Nine, died and faded away in a gust of golden mist caught on the wind.

Hela, Goddess of Death, rightful heir to the throne of Asgard, and Ragnarok personified, escaped her eternal imprisonment as Loki had vowed. She spoke nothing of their arrangement. Fenrir was as feral as he'd always been.

Later, after Surtur's fire had raged, the Asgardians made their escape. Loki, God of Mischief, Curse-breaker and Silvertongue, kept himself busy in their short time of peace making amends with his brother. Wondering if his sister had been wise enough to escape the flaming blade of Muspelheim.

Further on, he pretended to die again on the boarded refugee ship, choked to death by the massive purple hand of Thanos. He'd given up the space stone to him – the first stone in his collection, a shining blue beacon on a gauntlet of dwarven make – and set the ship on fire, adamant that there would be no resurrections this time.

Clearly, Thanos didn't know him well enough.

Playing dead, he spent his time wrapped in an illusion listening to the Black Order discuss the planned siege of Xandar. Thor, God of Thunder, King of the Realm-not-so-Eternal, cried over him again. He let go of the illusion when the ship fell apart, separating him from his brother. Heimdall's lifeless body drifted far beyond his reach, scattered among fallen Asgardians.

Unable to do anything more for his brethren, Loki followed his memories through time, skipping over the boring parts by way of infinity stone. Floating aimlessly through space had lost its appeal years ago.

When time snapped back into place, the stone glowing dimly underneath another layer of illusion, he blinked awake on the Grandmaster's vessel, gasping for air and coughing. Valkyrie was shaking him roughly by the shoulders, shouting at him to wake up.

"Enough, woman! I yet live."

The last Valkyrie punched him in the face before she took him in her arms, cursing his name to a thousand unknown gods.

"Well, he's all right. Bit rough around the edges. Greasy. Beat up. But when's he not?" Korg commented, leaning over them both. Loki rolled his eyes.

"Thank you for your enlightening input, rocks-for-brains."

"Hey! I don't get to choose my brain mass."

Valkyrie ignored them both.

"What happened? Where's your brother?"

"With the… the biggest idiots in the galaxy, I think." He gasped for breath through her embrace. "Odin's beard, Valkyrie, you're suffocating me."

She released him, pulling him up roughly to his feet by his shoulder plate. Generously, she palmed a full decanter of alcohol against his chest, smacking him roughly in the square of his back.

"Didn't think there could be bigger idiots than you two."

"Oh, you'll see." He pulled the stopper and tossed it to the side, taking two mighty swigs from the Grandmaster's finest stock of liquid poison. "Where's our transponder? I've a message."

* * *

Xandar happened. The Black Order ravaged the planet searching for the Power Stone, as Loki had seen them do three times before. The Guardians fought valiantly, Thor even more so, with a half-staffed team of Avengers fighting at his side. Thanos eventually won the stone from the Nova Corps, crushing a tree-being in his path. Proxima Midnight speared the Lord of Stars and Gamora tore her to shreds. War raged, glorious and bloody.

Valkyrie and the remaining Asgardians were off to Midgard to fight a battle there, in a place called Wakanda. The mind stone from his spear was being protected by whatever of Earth's mightiest heroes were left.

Loki waited for the battle to turn sour. When Stephen Strange decided to steal away to his Sanctum Sanctorum to protect the true time stone and his realm, Loki followed.

This time, he tackled Strange out of the way of the falling wall, sending them crashing into a series of glass displays. The time stones (one past, one present) merged in a flash of green light, the Universe unable to sustain them both now that Loki had broken the cycle.

"What-?"

"Later," he demanded, rolling off Strange and into the rubble. He leaned up, casting a protective ward on the Sanctum door. It wouldn't hold off the hostiles long. "Your ring."

"What?"

"Your ring. _Now_."

"Why?"

"You're more agreeable when you're dying, you know that?" Loki threw himself back over his comrade, straddling him again. Strange protested, but Loki pinned him down, holding both his hands above his head and ripping the sling ring clean off his fingers.

"You dare—" Loki stood up, stumbling once through the rubble to get away from the Midgardian sorcerer. He slipped the gaudy ring on his fingers. "Wait for a damned second, Loki. Do you even know how to use that?"

He scoffed.

"Who do you think I am?"

With a single, lazy flick of his hand, Loki cast his spell. There was no dramatic twirling these sorcerers seemed to favor; the ring flashed gold and a portal opened, fire-orange and sparking around the rim.

Stephen Strange's pallor was impressively similar to death's.

"What've you done?"

"What?" He smiled, nonchalant. "Afraid of a little Death, Sorcerer Supreme?"

The portal spilled with grey fog, chasing along the floor and sweeping over his ankles. No longer dead, he could smell the realm as it spilled into theirs; like trees, dead and burned, or Ygdrassil's magic, volatile and powerful.

"Loki, no!"

Brought to his feet by his sentient cape, Strange cast his mantras dramatically. Loki cast an errant spell over his shoulder, knocking him clear out of the air. Years of experience always won out over showy would-be apprentices.

"Hela?!" He stepped forward towards the portal, though not foolish enough to cross over. Mist spilled up to his knees. "Your payment's come due, dear sister. Or did Surtur best you?"

The fog grew thicker, threatening to reach his waist now. Somewhere, a wolf howled. Unseen hands pulled at his legs. The tinkle of a woman's laughter blew past his face on the breeze.

"Oh, my sweet, blue little brother." He saw her then, like a ghost in the shadow. Skin sparking with embers, wounds pitted across her left side like a pox that burned orange, she stepped into Midgard with a wicked smile across her maimed face. Surtur's fires had scarred her, but Death still lived. Or not. "It's good to see you again."

Loki took one purposeful step back, feigning confidence with a smile. White bone struck out from a burned hole in her cheek, smoking around its edges. She'd been bested by the flame. Burned through by Ragnarok.

"Indeed."

How had she survived the blade?

"Where is he, this Thanos?"

"Imminent. Seeking the mind stone."

She touched underneath his chin, tilting his gaze up to her one good eye. The other had been burned through, half her face charred like a log on the fire.

"Then what are we waiting for?"

* * *

True Ragnarok came in all its blazing glory. Thor and Loki stood side by side and watched it engulf the universe, their sister lit by the light of Ygdrassil itself as she speared Thanos through, his armies demolished, the Black Order crumpled under her might. The Infinity Gauntlet was a shining beacon in the night; it shattered when Thor struck it with Stormbreaker, Eitri's finest creation, and the Soul Stone tumbled from its home.

Hela, Goddess of Death, Realm Killer, and Subject to None, picked the shining gem up out of the tall grass. The universe stood still in anticipation, dread in its heart.

Dismissively, she tossed it into her littlest brother's hands. Loki had thought enough not to fumble it.

"Go on, then, Stonekeeper," she crooned, her blackened face smeared purple with blood. Her antlers curled higher than he remembered. "Do your worst."

Thor stood beside him, broken gauntlet in one hand and his axe in the other. Five more stones still glistened between them.

He knew what he was meant to do.

 _"Rebirth,"_ he remembered his Mother saying, when he'd been just a child on her lap begging for a second story before sleep. _"That's the meaning of Ragnarok, my love. It's not about the end of the world. It's about renewal, when the world's gone too sour. When it's time for us to start anew. Never be afraid of the end."_

"Brother," Loki whispered, holding his hand out. "Best we make good on our claim."

Thor straightened up, confused, but placed one large finger of the Gauntlet in his brother's hand all the same. His stayed at its rim.

"Our claim?"

"To be Gods."

By the will of two brothers, six stones, and the might of their sister, the Universe restored itself. Half of life returned. Planets and realms rebuilt themselves. The Avengers reassembled, the Guardians reunited, and Heimdall, shining, opened his golden eyes somewhere in the darkest reaches of space.

The cycle started anew.

Ragnarok was complete.


End file.
